Redskins Saturday Spotlight: Three cornerbacks to solve the conundrum

This NFL Draft class is chock-full of long athletes with plus developmental profiles, so it’s an inherently impressive feat to be the very best athlete in this cornerback class. Florida’s C.J. Henderson has the honor of boasting that title.

Now in his junior season, and his third year as a full-time starter for the Gators, Henderson has plenty of game tape to put his extraordinary traits on full display. NFL-caliber athletes are in a tier of their own, but the cream of the crop stand out in their own ways.

Henderson was on Bruce Feldman’s “Freaks” list this past offseason, and Pro Football Network’s Carter Donnick quantified Henderson’s athletic traits in a summer article, spotlighting Henderson’s 40.5-inch vertical and his 4.35 40-yard dash. All this, and Henderson stands at 6-foot-1, 193, and squats almost 550 pounds. He has the size and strength to go with his searing speed and explosiveness.

That said, Henderson, on the development spectrum, is a bit on the raw side. He hasn’t gotten off to a fast start in 2019, and tackling technique has been a concern for him. He relies on his athleticism too much at this point, but once he fully supplements his athletic profile with more mental refinement, perhaps this week against Kentucky, he could take his trend-setting ways to the NFL, and become the standard there as well.